Am I My Refrigerator's Keeper??

My house has become a breeding ground for rabid Costa Rican insects.  My pantry is filled with fluttering gray moths which lay eggs that hatch into worms in the flour, oatmeal, pasta, beans, popcorn..... you name it.  Then the worms spin themselves into little webby coccoons and hatch into More Moths.  Remember the spider cave in Lord of the Rings?  That's what parts of my pantry look like.  Frodo had it easy.

Then, to add insult to injury, the ants have moved in -- I think they've discovered the tasty little webbed up worms -- and are swarming (there's no other word for it) on the ceiling.  It's Just Plain Gross.  We pick worms and moths out of our pasta and cereal, and I have to fight my way through a mass of webs just to find the oatmeal.  Shudder.  Yuck.

As I've mentioned before, I've been doing battle, so there are little gray (indelible) streaks on the ceilings and walls where the moths have met a just fate.

Did I mention it's GROSS???

And why do I have this menagerie in my house?  The little beasties are feeding on the spelt flour and pasta which I have to keep stocked to feed my kids.  Talk about a Catch-22.

But, I'm brighter than I look.  I finally realized that for "medical reasons" the Embassy might just supply us with a second refrigerator for storing flour.  

So I called the refrigerator guy, and I asked, and was met with a flat refusal:  "Embassy policy is only one refrigerator per household."  Sigh.  So I hung up and moped.  And 30 minutes the phone rang, it was the refrigerator guy at the embassy (my new best friend), who -- On His Own! -- had called the Embassy nurse and gotten a special permit for us to have a second refrigerator for "medical reasons."  And then he said it would be delivered in just two days!

I was dancing with joy for those two days, telling everyone I met -- including complete strangers -- that I was going to get a new refrigerator!!  Yippee!!  Wahoo!  And then I'd do a little jig as they backed slowly away from me, eyes wide with something like terror.

And then my refrigerator came, and I was still dancing and smiling as I wiped it down and repositioned it so it was in Exactly The Right Spot.

And then I stopped smiling when it exploded.  Smoke, brief flames, scorch mark on the floor, I had it all.  But what I did NOT have, was a refrigerator.  It stopped running (and so did everything else in that part of the house).  I stared at it aghast.  I shook it.  I burst into tears.  Some part of the refrigerator's frame had, when I so lovingly repositioned it, cut into the power cord, causing it to short out and DIE.  What was I going to do?  How was I going to get it fixed?  I envisioned a burned out motor and thousands of dollars worth of repairs.  How was I going to break the news to my new best friend that I had blown up his refrigerator five minutes after it was delivered??

I called my husband and asked him to break the bad news, and then I left the house so no one could call me back.

But my husband is smarter than I am.  He put in a work order -- an anonymous process which requires no lengthy explanations and assigns no blame -- and the next day an electrician came to fix the fridge.  I arranged to be out of the house at the time and left the whole matter in my housekeeper's capable hands.

The electrician may have had a good laugh at my expense, but I don't know about it.  And neither does my new best friend (unless he reads this blog!).

And now my new refrigerator is running marvelously, freezing to death thousands of unhatched wormlings and moths.  And I'm dancing with joy again.

The lights inside it don't work, and I really do need my emergency lantern to see my way around inside it, but I'm so happy it doesn't even matter.

Battle Against the Insects:  EW - 1, Beasties - 0.